53 YEARS

"Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;" (Ephesians 5:24-25)

There are some things you write and post that can be viewed as "loaded". If you're not SUPER careful and cautious, such postings can "come back to bite you". This is one of those, and so I'm endeavoring to be very careful as I write. I will be sharing a story but deliberately changing some details just for the reasons I open with. The essential story is true, however.

Several days ago, a friend that I will call "Nikki" shared a sad story with me. She'd gone to church at the medium-sized evangelical church where she attends where the congregation was greeted with devastating news: One of the most beloved Members of that church, a woman in her seventies who'd been an active Member for over thirty years had died that week due to complications following surgery. I will call the woman "Juliette Hudson". Juliette had been in church on the previous Sunday with her husband "Zack". It was known she was going in for surgery. People from the church prayed for her the way evangelical Christians will pray for a fellow Church Member going in for surgery. Everybody expected to see her soon, having had a successful operation. Instead, things went horribly wrong, there were complications, and after a couple of days, she passed away.

Nikki told me that although Zack and Juliette are a lot older, she felt closer to them than to anyone else in the church. The news hit her hard. But the hardest part was Zack's pain. The widower was crushed. He said, "I will never stop loving her", and shared how theirs was really a dream relationship. It was not a perfect marriage, but it was the next best thing. This was one of those one in a thousand couples who were soul mates, desperately in love, almost inseparable, and had an almost perfect marriage. Yes, Zack knows Juliette is in Heaven, and he finds comfort in that. But his loss has left him almost inconsolable.

I must say, Nikki's words just stayed with me. I pondered them. I later saw Nikki and asked her,

"How is that possible? So few people achieve that sort of a marriage. So few people have that kind of a relationship. What do you suppose is their secret? How do you suppose that is possible?"

Her answer was brief but powerful:

"I don't think that sort of thing happens very often at all. I think it's very rare. But I think it's achieved when you have two very unselfish people that marry each other."

If you're like me, that is very sobering. It's true. But how does one truly become unselfish? And if one unselfish person is paired with one selfish person, will that work? I think not. Are you unselfish? Honestly, I can be a very kind person and a very generous person, but I am shamefaced as I write that through most of my adult life I've been a selfish person. Yes, I'm a committed evangelical Christian. I am a nice guy. I can be very kind and very generous. I can be very helpful. And I can also be very selfish.

This couple, Zack and Juliette, was married for fifty-three years in an almost perfect marriage. Yes, it's very rare. It probably shouldn't be. Among evangelical Christians, problematic marriages should be very rare. This incident involving a couple that I never personally met has gripped me, and caused me to do an enormous amount of soul searching.